Our Story
Sixteen years in
the ground.
We came to farming late, with more optimism than experience. What we lacked in knowledge, we made up for in willingness to learn — from the soil, from neighbours, and from our own mistakes.
Tom and Kate Croft bought 40 acres of tired arable land near Hereford in 2008. Tom was a chef; Kate was a landscape ecologist. Neither had farmed before. Their first winter was humbling.
The soil — compacted by decades of conventional arable farming — took three years to start responding to care. But by 2012, the worm counts were rising, the polytunnel was producing year-round, and the first CSA members were collecting boxes from the farm gate.
Today the farm supports three full-time growers, a laying flock of 100 hens, eight beehives, and a network of 140 CSA members. Over 80 varieties of vegetables, herbs, and flowers are grown annually — all without chemical inputs.
The sourdough starter has been running since the first harvest. The honey changes flavour from year to year with what the bees find in the meadow. Nothing here is hurried.
How we farm
Regenerative from the start.
We've never used synthetic chemicals on this land. Not because it's fashionable — because we believe it's wrong.
No-till growing
We've ploughed our fields exactly once — when we first arrived in 2008 to break up decades of compaction. Since then, we use broadforks, compost and cover crops to keep the soil structure intact. Undisturbed soil holds carbon, retains water, and supports the mycorrhizal networks that feed our plants.
Composting everything
Every crop residue, spent bedding from the hen houses, and vegetable offcut goes into our three-bay composting system. We turn it monthly for 12 months before applying it to the beds. The result is a rich, sweet-smelling compost that has built our topsoil depth from 12cm to over 30cm in 16 years.
Wildflower meadows
We seeded 1.5 acres of wildflower meadow across our field margins in 2019 using a 43-species mix of native plants. These margins have transformed insect populations on the farm — we now count over 200 species of bee, butterfly and hoverfly, providing the pollination services our crops depend on.
Water stewardship
We harvest rainwater from all our barn and polytunnel roofs into a 250,000-litre underground storage system. This water — topped up by a natural spring that runs through the lower field — supplies all our irrigation needs through the summer without drawing from mains supplies.
The Team
The people behind the harvest.
Tom & Kate Croft
Founders & growers
Tom trained as a chef before buying the farm; Kate was a landscape ecologist. Between them they brought the skills to grow food beautifully and to understand what the land needed to thrive. They live on the farm with their three children and an unreasonable number of chickens.
Rosa Ashford
Head grower
Rosa joined CROFT in 2016 after five years at a biodynamic farm in Shropshire. She plans all the rotations, manages the seed catalogue, and is responsible for the market garden that produces most of the salads, herbs and cut flowers.
Will Croft
Livestock & bees
Tom's brother Will came to the farm in 2019 to take over the laying flock and the beehives. He manages the mobile hen housing system, maintains the wildflower meadow, and extracts the honey each August with help from the whole family.